


paper trail

by spiritscript



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Childhood Friends, Confessions, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, Pining, Very mild cussing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:28:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26933626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiritscript/pseuds/spiritscript
Summary: When he is ten, Osamu meets a boy in an arcade.When he is eleven he becomes his friend, only to find he is never to see him again.When he is sixteen, that becomes a lie.And Suna falls more than a little bit in love.
Relationships: Miya Osamu/Suna Rintarou
Comments: 43
Kudos: 293
Collections: SunaOsa Week 2020





	1. tickets

**Author's Note:**

> For SunaOsa week
> 
> Day one, tier two: arcade

Both of Osamu’s pockets are bulging and almost spilling over with coins, the clang of which is only audible in his mind through the feel of them tapping gently against his leg. The weight incessantly attempted to pull at his shorts, and so he now finds himself waddling into the dim neon lighted room of the arcade with his hands in his bethoops, hiking his waistband as high as anatomically possible. 

He loves summer for all of the superficial reasons any ten year old loves summer: no school, lots of ice cream, and endless possibilities. At this age, summer vacation is a precious commodity that must be cherished and protected and spent wisely. It’s a time when great adventures can take place and life can be truly _lived_ —not suffered through as a teacher complains about his penchant for falling asleep in class, terrible penmanship, swinging back in his chair, and chewing all his pencils. It is freedom incarnate.

Despite the invincibility afforded by a lack of school and temporarily free of his brother, today is laden with frustration, the type that makes him want to stamp his feet and throw something. Something fragile preferably. On the floor.

Because he also likes very much to win, and there is one game in the local arcade that’s been denying him this pleasure.

So today he is armed with a battalion of coins and sheer willpower. 

He walks into the familiar atmosphere, dodging around people until he finds it: the object of his anger. He can feel the need to win welling up inside of him, causing his hands to twitch and stomach to squeeze. This was the only inanimate object to ever raise such a feeling in him—the only animate object being his brother. Volleyball too but he doesn’t really know which of those categories it fis into.

He slots the first coins in, hears the soft tinkling clink of the coins falling into the bed of metal already established within its belly, and watches the game beep to life. He can already feel himself biting his tongue in concentration, his eyebrows furrowing so much it would make his grandmother tell him he’d get wrinkles— _fine_ , he would reply to that, _at least then I won’t hafta look like Sumu no more._

He holds the joysticks, already feeling his palms getting sweaty, and repeats the same actions he’s been following for the last two days. Jump, run, jump, jump, attack, attack, attack, run, jump etc. etc. and on and on. He had played it so much the day before that the pixels had replayed themselves over the canvas of his eyelids as he’d tried to sleep. But neither the re-runs nor eventual sleep afforded any answers as the boss knocks down his little character—crosses on its eyes and a ghost rising out of it. An offensive GAME OVER rises into the centre of the screen and he sets himself to play again.

And again.

And again.

He stops keeping count after the third attempt, eventually becoming wary of how his shorts have become lighter, how they need fixing more infrequently than when he began. Rubbing his eyes roughly with one hand, he reaches into his pocket for two more coins when a small voice says something.

He turns to the boy beside him, shocked back into the world of three-dimensional real people. 

“Wha?” he asks.

The boy looks about Osamu’s age, a little shorter than him maybe, with dark, moppy hair that lies flat on his head except for the random pieces that stick out haphazardly towards the back. He points to the screen and says, “you need to jump and attack at the same time.”

Osamu looks at the screen and tilts his head to the side, “you can jump and attack at the same time?”

The boy nods.

“Oh,” Osamu says and lets two more coins drop into the little slot without another word eager to finally _win_. Truthfully, he wasn’t really used to losing.

He goes through the motions what he hopes is the last time, aware he’s being watched, until he gets to the same place as always.

“Now jump and press the button over and over,” instructs the small voice from beside him.

Osamu squints his eyes, leans in close, and begins to slam the button and jumps. 

But he’d been so wrapped up in learning this revolutionary new attack combo, he forgot to actually move forward, resulting in the re-emergence of the cursed GAME OVER. 

The boy sighs loudly beside him and his shoulders hunch more than they had been, giving him the appearance of curling in on himself. This makes Osamu wonder if he actually was taller than him or if it was just his terrible posture. If Osamu did that, he knew for a fact his granny would be annoyed.

Looking up from beneath the hair once again covering his eyes, the boy asks, “want me to press the button while you do the rest?”

Osamu nods quickly and sticks his hand back into his pocket, pulling out two more coins while the boy takes his position beside the machine, finger over the button. 

“Ready when you are,” he says.

Osamu pays the fare and resumes his own position—face set and ready to win.

They go through the motions and it’s stunted at first, trying to sync up their attacks and movements. But then it just clicks and they flow through the game seamlessly until they get to the final battle.

“Okay,” the boy says and Osamu pauses, “Now… go.”

Osamu moves the little red sticks, the character on screen charges forward and Osamu flicks the second controller, throwing the character into the air and over the head of the beast. The boy beside him bides his time, hand stiff but clearly alert. Suddenly, he begins to furiously slam on the red button for the attack. On screen, the little character jumps into the air over the monster, does a little flip and slams down with its little sword pointed downward. 

They hit it and it stumbles. 

“Again,” the boy instructs and Osamu obliges. 

Again it stumbles. Again they attack. 

On this third try, the character slices down and the monster stumbles, takes a step back, wobbles, collapses to its knees.

“Attack!” The boy says louder and more animatedly than he had said anything else in their brief encounter.

Osamu pushes on the joystick again and drives the knight forward as quickly as possible, and the boy slices repeatedly at its belly using his little button until it falls dead. 

Green letters now travel up the screen declaring YOU WIN, and the boy turns back to Osamu again, messily palming his hair out of his eyes, grinning sheepishly, “see?” 

But Osamu’s attention is drawn to the steady stream of tickets that start to slither their way out of the machine. He grabs them as they come out and meticulously folds them, as his father had shown both him and Atsumu so many times. Then he splits the stack down the middle, focusing especially hard on this part, feeling his tongue sticking out of his mouth as he does so.

He reaches out, one half of the small stack balled in his fist. But the boy isn’t there anymore.

Osamu holds onto the tickets, bringing them to the arcade with him everyday, looking for the boy, hoping to give him his share. He wouldn’t have won without him and so it was only fair for him to share them. And Osamu, with Atsumu as a brother, is far too knowledgeable in unfairness to not to. 

“Jus’ use ‘em yerself,” Atsumu says on the last day of summer, frowning as a Charmander plush is precariously carried towards the drop box of the claw machine he had been working on for over an hour. When it slips from the grasp of the metal legs, hitting the edge of the box and bouncing back into the collection of stuffed toys, he kicks it. Forcefully.

“Miyas!” They hear from behind them. Both freeze, haunches rising up to their ears, a dangerous smirk on Atsumu’s face. 

“Well I can’t use any of ‘em now,” Osamu mumbles into his hand as they sit on the pavement outside, “ya got us banned. Again.”

Osamu has learned his mistake. He is a year older, a helluva lot smarter than his older by five minutes twin brother, and now has a bum bag strapped around his waist for all those coins and eventual tickets. 

This year, he has a goal, he’s going to win the bumper prize: a shiny new Nintendo Ds Lite because he is absolutely sick of having to share one with Atsumu who is most certainly not going to be allowed to touch it with his horrible, grubby hands. This one would be his and Atsumu can have the old one which Osamu hates because the screen doesn’t stay open properly after Atsumu threw a tantrum and shook it too hard playing Mario Kart.

Of course, it takes some convincing for the manager to allow him in with a threat of his (and by the nature of their identicality, Atsumu’s) face being plastered as banned for life along every door and wall of the place, should there be any issues.

At the age of eleven, he believes this is a genuine possibility and promises some invisible force he’ll get good grades this year if Atsumu doesn’t get them kicked out for a third year in a row. He doesn’t really have much hope for that, and decides to get his DS as quickly as possible.

So he has a plan. 

He walks towards the back corner purposefully. He can’t remember the name of the terrible game (there’s a reason there’s only one copy of it in the arcade) but it's easy and therefore he is guaranteed to collect a lot of tickets. Quickly. He also still has all of his unspent tickets from last year and he heard from someone at school that they don’t change the tickets every year and—

Someone’s playing his game.

And as mentioned, there’s only one copy of it. And it’s taken.

He doesn’t really know what to do, this is throwing the whole plan off course. The plan had been simple; play this game for all it’s worth or until he became so sick of it he couldn’t anymore, and then move on. He needed to play it first though so he could see just how many tickets he could get from it and then decide what to do from there. But now even this minimal plan was gone, destroyed, KO’d, game over’d. 

The obstacle to Osamu’s plan and happiness throws a quick glance over his shoulder, before returning to the game, a pew pew pew sound repeating constantly until it almost becomes one long, continuous hum.

Osamu recognises those sharp eyes and that mussed hair—it hadn’t improved at all in a year, it was longer though if that meant anything. 

“It’s you!” Osamu declares, proud of himself for remembering considering his parents often noted he and his brother lose interest in things too quickly and that they would ‘forget their heads if they weren’t screwed on.’ This was something he could brag about to Atsumu, definitive proof that he is in fact the better brother.

The boy’s shoulders jolt and stiffen, and he begins to curl in on himself, but remains focused on his game.

“Oi,” Osamu says, one hand fidgeting with the zip of his bum bag, “I looked everywhere fer ya.” The zip opens and he pulls out one of the neat stacks in it and sidles up beside the boy, waving them in front of his eyes.

The boy ducks and weaves, trying to see past the hand sporadically blocking his vision.

“Move,” he grumbles, trying to flick the hand out of his way. But Osamu’s sibling senses kick in and the desire to annoy and do the complete opposite becomes so overwhelming he sticks up his other hand and begins to wiggle that through the stranger’s field of vision too.

“Stop it!” The boy says loudly and turns to Osamu as the game tolls his loss. 

Osamu is grinning, that perverse joy garnered through successful harmless torture stretching his grin wide, until he looks at the furrowed brows of the other boy, the scrunched nose, the cheeks puffed out in anger, the deep furrow in his brow.

Maybe Osamu had forgotten that not everyone deserves to be teased and tortured as much as Atsumu.

“Sorry,” he mumbles weakly, looking down at his shoes ashamed of himself and silently redacts his better brother status from himself. Then he slowly remembers why he had started being an idiot in the first place, and raises the tickets. 

“These are yers. From last year.” Osamu looks at the boy from beneath his lowered head and eyes, “I heard they haven’t changed the tickets so you can use them this year.”

The boy looks at him blankly, the irritation having settled and blended back into his face, the ripples in the water once again becoming still. His eyes are fixed on Osamu’s proffered fist, but he doesn’t make to take them, tilting his head in silent question instead.

“You kept them?” there’s almost judgment in his voice, but there’s also a sliver of amusement.

Osamu heaves a sigh and pushes them against the boy's chest, forcing him to finally accept them.

“My brother got us kicked out before I could use ‘em, not that I was gonna.”

“Why?”

Osamu narrows his eyes at him suspiciously, he doesn’t think he’s ever met someone like him before; he asks a lot of questions, his eyes seem to ask more. Most notably, he’s not jumping on the offering of free tickets. 

“He kicked a claw machine.”

“No, why wouldn’t you have used them?”

“Ohh,” Osamu nods, “ya helped me win ‘em so some are yours.”

The boy looks down at the tickets now in his hands, “oh” he says softly and looks back up at Osamu. “Thanks.”

Osamu nods again, knowing his convictions were right all along and that maybe this meant he had regained the title of better brother. At the very least it was another point in his favour.

“Yer welcome.” He sticks out his hand once again, now empty and open, “my name’s Miya Osamu, but ya can call me ‘Samu.”

The boy shakes his head, “no that’s rude.”

“Not if I tol’ja it’s okay,” his hand is still waiting in the air in front of him.

Finally it’s taken and the boy smiles faintly, “my name’s Suna Rintarou.”

“Yer not from around here are ya Suna-san?”

The boy, Suna, shakes his head, hair falling into his eyes. “No, my granny lives here, we’re just visiting.” 

Shyer than he had been five minutes ago, he’s barely able to keep eye contact. Osamu feels a little sorry for him, being dragged to a place that he didn’t know during what should be the happiest days of the year. Somehow he doubts he has any friends here.

The thought of a Nintendo DS lite posits itself in his mind's eye: the shiny prize he’d waited all the end of school term to chase after. 

He has a choice to make.

“Good thing I am,” he declares without hesitation, and a slow smile grows on his face, “I’ll show ya all the best places.” 

By the end of summer, his bum bag and pockets of change are almost empty, and he does not have near enough tickets for his prize. But his summer wasn’t wasted. 

Sitting on the pavement outside the arcade, the thrill of video games not holding as much weight as they had all those days ago, he and Suna silently work on their ice creams. 

“Should we really have left him?” Suna asks.

“Hmm?”

“Atsumu, should we have left him?”

“He’s fine,” Osamu says, taking a bite out of his ice cream as soon as Suna looks at him, which always earns him a grimace, “he owes me.”

“Yeah but… should we really have ran away and left him to pay.”

Osamu rolls his eyes and squints, “ya feelin’ sorry fer him or somethin’?”

Snorting, Suna takes a lick of his own ice cream, and eyes just how little Osamu has left already, “no. Think he’ll find us?”

“I hope not,” Osamu smiles. Then, “what time ya leavin’ today by the way?”

Suna takes a moment, distracting himself by catching some of the ice cream that had begun to melt before it ran onto his hands. 

“Soon.” He hesitates while Osamu begins working on the wafer of his cone with a small content smile, all of the ice cream already devoured. “I eh...”

Osamu looks at him, mouth still full and chewing so that when he tries to say something which sounds vaguely like ‘spit it out’, it doesn’t quite translate correctly through the mush.

“I’m not coming back next year,” he sees Osamu pout and swallow but continues, “My granny’s moving to Tokyo with us.”

“Oh,” Osamu says, the deflation clear in his voice. He’d spent all summer trying to make up for his rudeness at the beginning and had come to actually really enjoy Suna’s company. They’d realized they had a lot more in common than just video games and a preference for the indoors. Volleyball was one of those things, torturing Atsumu was another. 

Suna begins to chew the inside of his cheek, wanting to say some of those things that kids don’t understand, but of course he didn’t yet know what those things were.

So instead he looks down at his ice cream that’s quickly melting and focuses on not letting that happen. When he finishes it down to the cone, he wordlessly offers it to Osamu, who accepts it eagerly and takes a large bite from it. This had become habitual along with calling to each other's houses in the morning and not saying goodbye until the sun had begun to set. 

“So,” Osamu says when he has the second cone finished, “yer not comin’ back? Ever?”

Suna shakes his head and decides to stare at the ground.

“Ya’ll hafta come find me if ya ever do.”

“How will I find you?” Suna asks quickly. 

Contemplating this, Osamu lets an elbow rest on his knee, one hand tucking under his chin; his thinking face. Suddenly, he perks up, eyes widening and mouth falling open slightly. 

“Stay here.” He instructs and scrambles to his feet running into the arcade. He pulls out the small row of tickets he still has with him and slaps them on the prize counter. The teenage boy working there quirks an eyebrow, an amused smile on his face.

“What can I get ya?” 

Osamu scans the display and points to a pen of some knock off superhero that was probably supposed to resemble Spiderman. The teenager nods, counts out the required number of tickets from the little bundle, takes out the pen, and hands it to Osamu along with whatever tickets are leftover. 

Scooping up everything, Osamu runs back outside, and jumps down to sit beside Suna again, grimacing when he lands a little too hard. Suna lets out a short sharp laugh before covering his mouth—Osamu tries to fix him with a stare, but ends up smiling too. 

“Here,” he says eventually and pulls off a ticket to hand Suna, and one for himself too. “We’ll write the kanji fer our names and we can use that ta look fer each other.” It felt like a brilliant plan, foolproof, all they would need was each other's names. Obviously.

Holding the ticket down between two fingers on the footpath, Osamu leans in close and attempts to write his name as neatly as possible in whatever space he can find without ripping it against the stone. When he’s done, he passes the pen to Suna, who does the same on the ticket in his hand. When finished, they make the exchange, each putting them into their pockets carefully.

“Ya hafta keep it safe,” Osamu warns him. 

Suna glares at him and goes to answer, probably insult him, when they hear a voice calling out to them. Looking up, they see Atsumu jogging towards them and it only takes a glance for them to decide, and they set off running in the opposite direction.

“No fair!” Atsumu whines uselessly from behind them.

True to his word, Suna hadn’t returned the next year. Not long after that, Osamu had stopped returning to the arcade. The lights seemed to lose their lustre, the games lacked intrigue, the prizes grew mustier, and he’d gotten a new DS all for himself as a present on his twelfth birthday. 

Summer was spent in new ways, more age appropriate ways each year. At sixteen that mainly meant playing volleyball and complaining about something. Usually Atsumu.

But summer ended yesterday, leaving him sitting in a new classroom today. He’s actively ignoring the clatter and squeak of chairs, the high pitched hi’s and grumbled hellos, the sighing of chairs and teenagers, choosing instead to focus only on the little textured triangles he’s scribbling on the back cover of an unused copy, the paper too smooth, the cover still in tact.

A chair drags beside him, but he doesn’t look up. He doesn’t care. Instead he’s mentally already noting the hours until lunch as another triangle takes shape beneath his pen. His classmate sits down quietly, no show like everyone else pretending they care about each other’s summer or getting to know each other. He lets his head drop onto the desk, already tired from the effort of what’s to come. He probably should have sorted his sleeping pattern out a lot sooner, but there was something far more gratifying in kicking Atsumu’s ass in Pro Evolution Soccer after 12am.

He only pulls himself up, moving his shoulders first and the rest following, when he hears the hushing of voices and the rushed shuffle of feet and chairs around him. Their teacher stands at the front of the room, writing her name on the whiteboard before the bell rings and class begins, but Osamu’s attention is already lost, focusing instead on a bird flitting about on the window outside until his name is called.

“Here,” he replies statically, and a few heads turn to put a face to the name. A few linger. 

It’s only the first day, but he’s already resigning himself to a lot of eventualities. There would be the whole issue of making new friends now that he’s moved from middle to high school, maybe keep up old ones, maybe lose some. A new routine would have to be made, most urgently would be the need to fix his sleeping pattern, figure out how to fit in volleyball and extra practice alongside homework and videogames. Try and force himself to pay at least some attention in class. Take care of his brother probably. Clean up after his messes more than likely. Deal with any fall outs that are most definitely going to occur whether intentional or not. 

“Suna Rintarou?”

His back straightens and his head snaps to attention. That name, he knows that name. 

“Here,” the bored voice could almost make Osamu’s own tired with life inflection sound excited. 

That voice, he also knows it. It’s changed, but he knows it too. And it’s right beside him. 

He turns slowly, letting himself finally take in something other than himself in the classroom. It’s him, the kid from the arcade, his best friend from when best friends were as plentiful as coins in a slot machine. 

His hair is still a mop on his head, sticking out at the back, but styled a little more. He’s older. Of course he’s older, it's been five years. 

He’s slumped down into his chair, the too big blazer hiking up at the back and he’s grinning; a sharp canine barely visible beneath the stretch of his lopsided grin, eyes resolutely focused ahead of him.

Osamu feels a phantom pain in his wallet where a little orange ticket stub sits in its own slot, having been transferred there from a pocket to every wallet he has owned since with a precision unnecessary for a childhood memory of a boy he was never to see again.

“Guess ya lied to me,” Osamu says, regaining an air of disaffection as his body begins to mirror that of the boy beside him.

“Guess I did,” Suna replies easily, as if they’d known each other every day for the five years in between this and their last meeting. Finally he looks at Osamu. “Good to see you again.”


	2. letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > Miya Osamu is well liked. 
>> 
>> That’s definitely an understatement; he’s thoroughly admired.
>> 
>> The only person more admired than him would be his brother Atsumu. And yet, that doesn’t ever mean there is ever a lag in his adoration. Between the two of them, Suna thinks they’ve probably been confessed to by at least half of the girls in their own school, more than enough from other schools, and even plenty of boys. Probably half of all Hyogo actually. Not including the declarations of marriage intent screamed at them during volleyball matches. Man people are weird. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For SunaOsa Week. Day Five, Tier One: Confession/Crush

“Ugh,” Atsumu groans, throwing his bag at a chair and sending both of them skidding across the floor. “Ugh,” he repeats as he picks them both up, drags the chair back noisily, and then sits down beside Osamu, pulling out an identical bento box to that of his brother. 

Suna and Osamu just look at him as he peels off the lid and sighs heavily. Neither make to ask him what is going on and return to their own lunches. 

That does the trick and Atsumu is soon throwing his hands into the air.

“Fine, I’ll tell ye!”

“We didn’t ask Sumu,” Osamu replies, mouth full, eyes on his phone.

Atsumu’s flicks Osamu’s ear, who reciprocates by full on shoving Atsumu, almost throwing him out of his chair except for his quick reflexes, his right raising his bento into the air protectively. “Dude what the hell, you could have knocked my food.”

“And?”

Atsumu fixes himself and grits his teeth, clearly ready to do something catastrophically Atsumu in nature.

“Miyas!” Suna scolds, slapping the table. 

Both boys twitch and turn to look at him slowly with narrowed eyes. This was something he learned the first time he met them six years ago on a random summer when Osamu had adopted him as his best friend. He hadn’t understood the power it had back then or how to wield this magnificent knowledge until he re-stumbled upon it three months after moving to Hyogo permanently. He knows now. They would probably grow out of their instinctual Pavlovian response to it eventually - but that has yet to happen and so he has yet to stop.

Osamu picks up one of the copies still on his desk and throws it at Suna who dodges easily and grins mockingly.

“Sumu,” he says turning to the other brother, “just tell us so you shut up sooner.”

“Maybe I won’t tell ye at all.”

“Good,” both Suna and Osamu reply at the same time and look back at their phones.

“Fine, but it’s about you Samu, and,” he twirls a chopstick around his fingers, “I know ya want to know.”

“Then just tell me.”

“Nah, ya said ya didn’t wanna know.”

“Why didn’t one of you absorb the other,” interrupts Suna, letting his head fall onto his desk, before suddenly perking up again, eyes wide, “oh no, that would be like the two of you together. Constantly.” He pulls a face he hopes conveys the depth of his disgust.

They both fix him with a glare but he also knows they’re not about to argue with him, small minds probably narrowing in on a more important topic in their minds: who is the best and worst twin. 

He’s right.

Luckily, he also finished eating and needs a piss. So he stands and retreats as quickly as he can without it looking like an escape attempt. They wouldn’t notice anyway as they’re bringing up their mother’s smashed china doll versus stealing their father’s credit card and buying some online subscription without his knowledge. Again. 

“S-Suna-san.”

The sound of his name takes him by surprise and he turns towards the voice, eyes scanning the hallway for where it came from. They settle on a small girl he doesn’t recognise standing awkwardly beside the classroom door. 

“Yeah?” he answers, still not sure it had been her that called him in the first place.

The girl looks between Suna and the room where the twins are moving from bickering to actually arguing and he decides he’d been right.

“You’re friends with the Miyas right?” she doesn’t wait for an answer, “I asked Atsumu-san if he’d get Osamu-san for me, I-” she looks down at her hands, and it’s only then he realises she’s holding a small pink letter with neat gold writing on it, “I want to talk to him.”

Miya Osamu is well liked. 

That’s definitely an understatement; he’s thoroughly admired.

The only person more admired than him would be his brother Atsumu. And yet, that doesn’t ever mean there is ever a lag in his adoration. Between the two of them, Suna thinks they’ve probably been confessed to by at least half of the girls in their own school, more than enough from other schools, and even plenty of boys. Probably half of all Hyogo actually. Not including the declarations of marriage intent screamed at them during volleyball matches. Man people are weird. 

Apparently there’s even a joke among the girls in school that, if you don’t like one Miya, you’ll like the other. 

That makes Suna roll his eyes and pretend to gag. A lot. 

This usually awards him a light kick on the ankle or a shove on the shoulder. Unless it’s Atsumu, in which case nothing happens because Suna has too much blackmail on him for that to happen. Not that it helps Atsumu not to hit him - Suna still posts horrid photos of him sleeping on his Instagram, or sometimes goes old school and prints out a few hundred passport sized versions and hides them all over the school. 

He got in trouble for that one. 

A lot.

He maintains it was worth it.

Anyway, it looks like there's another person about to be added to the ever growing list of people the Miya twins have turned down.

The girl is saying something Suna really doesn’t care to hear, so he looks over his shoulder instead and calls Osamu. It takes another two more tries before he can rouse him out of the argument with his brother that was maybe becoming a little too heated.

"Someone wants to talk to you out here," he says when he finally has his attention and walks away before he or the girl can say anything.

Oh,” Suna says the next morning on their walk to school, acting as he had just remembered something, “what happened yesterday? With that girl?”

“The usual,” Atsumu cuts in, a sly grin on his face as he looks over his shoulder at Suna and Osamu, “he broke the poor girl's heart.”

“I’m not you Sumu, I tried ta be nice about it at least,” Osamu pouts.

“Doesn’t matter, ya still did and always do. At least people expect it from me”

Beside him, Osamu scowls at the ground. It’s rare for him not to have a rebuttal to Atsumu’s inane remarks - placid acceptance and consideration of Atsumu’s words is downright strange, possibly even dangerous since Osamu is always on the precipice of being just as stupid as his brother.

“Maybe,” Suna coos and both look at him curiously, “they actually like Osamu whereas with you, it’s entirely superficial and so they don’t actually care?”

“Screw you Sunarin,” Atsumu throws over his shoulder, face contorting, “must ya always take his side, would it kill ya fer once ta take mine?”

“No, but it’d definitely pain me to the point of wishing for death.”

Atsumu just huffs and continues walking. Suna feels a soft bump on his elbow and he turns to look at Osamu whose expression is softer than before.

The conversation seemingly having ended, Suna pulls out and flicks through his phone. 

He almost walks into Atsumu who stops dead in his tracks. Suna shoves him in the back causing him to stumble and he turns sharply with a murderous glare while Osamu laughs.

Atsumu turns back around and Suna follows his line of sight, seeing what had frozen him in the first place. There’s a small group of girls standing in front of the gym doors, two of them clutching little letters in their hands. Suna can see the dejected droop in Osamu’s shoulders from his peripheral vision. Maybe he just wishes he does.

“Can we help ye?” Atsumu asks, his voice dropping and smoothening the way it always does when he thinks he’s being cool and suave. Suna wants to pinch his arm and watch as the facade falls and he shows the tempestuous idiot everyone on the volleyball team knows he is. But then he remembers, everyone already knows and simply chooses to ignore it for reasons beyond his understanding.

“We.. my friend and I were hoping to talk to you and Osamu,” one of them stutters, colour in her cheeks, a wobble in her voice.

Suna steps around the blond twin and walks to the door past the little congregation without looking at them; it’s nothing to do with him. He pushes the door to the gym open and glances back at the twins, eyes lingering on Osamu’s face, trying to see past the blank look and tired eyes, wanting to ask more than he can.

As a child, Suna hated Hyogo. His grandmother’s house before they moved into it always had a strange miasma of lavender and baby powder and something very like rotten vegetables. Visiting used to be a chore and a necessity that had to be struggled through every year. His parents loved it, hence why they moved here as soon as his father’s job permitted much to his grandmother’s satisfaction. She had the same distaste for the city as Suna used to have for the countryside. 

Every chance they got, his parents used to rush and collect the barest of necessities, zipped them into a bag and left the urban jungle for the sprawling countryside. The only saving grace was that he always got a new video game every trip until he was old enough to venture out to the small arcade nearby by himself. 

He was a clever child, not necessarily in school grades, but he had ‘a good head on his shoulders’. Sly really. He also was just a little bit cautious of people. His good head and cautiousness is what made him avoid the twin boys he’d often seen bickering around town, each time covered in more plasters, arms and shins painted in varying shades of purple and blue, and green and yellow - no doubt from the way they pinched and pushed and kicked and punched each other. ‘Miyas’ he’d heard them called by more than one distressed business owner.

He was a smart child, he was a quiet child (even he knew this back then) and he knew he did not need anything to do with them.

Of course avoidance in a small town was near impossible, and at the age of ten he found himself helping one of them with a game he'd watched him struggle with for three days. Afterwards he panicked and ran home and didn't go back, deciding to suffer through the last few days of summer in the quiet of his temporary room surrounded by that smell and his now decent collection of personal video games.

Unfortunately, or so he had first thought, when he was eleven he’d had the unpleasant experience of being personally picked on by one of them, who he later realised was the boy from the year before. 

And somehow they became friends. 

Suna didn’t make friends easily back then (not that he does now but the reasons are different now). Probably because he was quiet and cautious and really not bothered with making them (or so he told himself rather than acknowledging that other people made him anxious and he liked comfort and not having to be the one to make the effort). 

But he soon found himself grateful to this quietly loud boy that dragged him around town with his twin brother trailing after them. 

When Suna met him again, he found himself once again being dragged about and dragged in by the same boy.

Yeah, he has it bad for a boy he met one summer six years ago and met again after five years and it would be cute if it wasn’t for the fact it is never going to happen. 

Horrible. Disastrous. Disgusting.

If this had happened to anyone else he’d have fixed them with a look accompanied by some choice condescending words and been on his way. No, instead it’s him and he can’t help how soft he feels and he hates it.

Osamu bites and tugs mindlessly on a long, colourful jelly sweet. It snaps and he begins chewing it slowly. Suna is half watching him, easily distracted from the haze of numbers and letters he’s supposed to be focusing on. They’re sitting on the floor around the coffee table in Osamu’s house. Atsumu was supposed to join for the study session, but neither had heard from him since practise ended and he’d decided to stay behind. Probably working on serves, he’s been messing up his floaters lately. 

One of Osamu’s hands lazily reaches into the school bag sitting on the table, pulling out another book as he tugs off another bite of the ridiculously long sweet.

“Have ya star-” he stops when, along with the book, a small purple envelope falls out and flutters to the ground. They both watch as it does - seemingly taking far longer than gravitationally possible to finally land. 

It lies there expectantly.

“You’ve been more popular than usual recently. Wonder why,” Suna says as conversationally as he can, eyes now fixed on an quadratic equation that has remained untouched for at least fifteen minutes.

When Osamu doesn’t answer, he looks up from where he’d begun tapping numbers that he isn’t entirely sure were the right ones into his calculator. Osamu is sitting with a small frown, his large eyes droopy and exasperated as he watches the letter. 

“You gonna open it?” Suna finally makes himself ask after too long of a silence, and puts down his pen. When he doesn’t receive an answer and Osamu doesn’t look like he’s going to move anytime soon, he decides to yank what’s left of the jelly sweet from his hand. 

The lack of reaction to having his food stolen really makes something prickle under Suna’s skin. 

“Want me to read it? I’ll just give a summary.”

“Ya stole my food.” 

“Took you long enough to realise,” with that Suna throws what’s left of the sweet into his mouth and grins mischievously. 

Osamu doesn’t fight back, another prickle inducing reaction, frowns deeper, then reaches for the small letter, fingers hovering for just a moment.

“Dunno,” he starts, turning it over and slipping a finger under the flap, “maybe cos Interhigh’s comin’ up?”

Suna doesn’t reply.

“Was awful yesterday, me and Tsumu turned both of them down,” he tears it apart as messily, little confetti-like pieces of envelope falling to the floor. “One actually cried.”

Suna doesn’t ask, he already knows it was whoever confessed to Osamu. It always is.

He finally slides the little homemade card out and opens it quickly, eyes flicking straight to the bottom, not worried about the empty compliments based on presuppositions above that.

“I don’t even know who this person is.” He looks up, eyes wide again, his eyebrows twisted.

Suna shrugs, if Osamu doesn’t know who it is, Suna is far less likely to know. Osamu is definitely the nicer of the two of them, especially to other people. What had begun in his childhood as caution towards people had developed into a general dislike of them unless given reason to feel otherwise. He still doesn’t even know half the names of the people in his class. Doesn’t have reason to. Doesn’t plan on changing that any time soon. 

“Do ya think there’s a way ta make it stop?” Osamu asks, toying with the edge of the card.

Suna swallows and looks down at the abandoned equation and maybe his teachers were right, maybe his handwriting is bordering on illegible.

“Maybe if you started dating someone?” 

Osamu glances up at him and Suna returns it. He doesn’t miss the slight pink tone that has risen under his friend’s skin.

He’s blushing. What does that mean?

An equation that isn’t mathematical answers itself in his head.

“You like someone.” He doesn’t need to say it as a question, he already knows he’s right. Any answer will just be confirmation. He looks down at the ink stains on his copy that were numbers and letters just moments ago. 

He starts to pack up his pens when Osamu does confirm his suspicions with silence.

“There’s your answer then, just… ask them out or whatever.” He closes his books.

“Are ya leaving?”

“Yeah, I’m starving and I forgot I promised to help mum with something.” He puts them in his bag.

“What if,” Osamu pauses and Suna looks at him, his already big eyes wide and there’s worry written between them. “What if-”

“Samu,” he can’t bear to see him like this, he knows he’s going to hurt himself in the end but he’s not sure he cares if it means that look will be wiped from Osamu’s face. “Don’t be an idiot, anyone would be a fool to turn you down. And,” he scratches his neck, “if you do get turned down, people might pity you and leave you alone anyway so at least that would be something.”

With that he zips up his bag, stands up, and moves to throw it over his shoulder.

“But, how?” 

He pauses. 

“I suppose the same way as everyone else; a letter. I dunno. I’ve never done it.” He shrugs ever so nonchalantly, “sorry I’m not more help.” With that he finally throws the bag over his shoulder and leaves Osamu and his letters behind him.

Avoiding Osamu would be impossible, Suna knows this and yet he still ties. But they share a class, and a volleyball team, and a group of friends, and have always spent pretty much every moment of every school day side by side in some capacity or another. Crap.

Of course it was near impossible, but also Osamu is quieter today, barely even bickering with Atsumu, so while he couldn't avoid him, Suna doubts it could exactly be called spending time together. He doesn’t know if maybe this is worse.

“Ya heading home?” He asks Suna after training.

Suna hums and Osamu falls into step beside him. 

“Mind if I walk with ya?”

Suna looks at him from the side of his eye. “You always do.”

He begins to fidget. 

“I know.” He doesn’t offer anything else.

They enter the clubroom and change, not saying anything else and that prickling feeling is slithering under Suna’s skin again, his heartbeat prominent and pushing it throughout his body. 

He doesn’t like it. If he had the chance, he’d have gotten ready and left before Osamu but one: that would be rude considering he specifically asked to go with him (not that Suna is above being rude but this is Osamu who he avoids being rude to in a serious capacity) and two: Osamu finished changing first and was standing by the door waiting by the time Suna’s ready.

They begin walking in silence, falling into step with each other easily. 

Except it’s also not easy because Osamu is clearly fidgeting and out of sync with himself even if he’s not out of sync with Suna. 

Suna figures he should ask what’s going on, but he has a sinking suspicion this is influenced by their conversation yesterday and he does not know if he can possibly deal with a conversation like that. 

Not yet.

It’s not like he didn’t know this day would come, they’re not eleven anymore where they feel as if they’re invincible to the world, he knows that nothing is forever and life doesn’t work out the way it does in your imagination. Suna can only hold on to him for so long before he’d have to share at the least, lose him completely at the most. 

They reach Suna’s turn off without a word being spoken.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Suna says without stopping, a bitter ache in his chest. 

Time to grow up.

“Wait!” Osamu calls a little louder than necessary.

Suna turns to look back at him. He’s got his bag in his arms staring almost wildly at Suna. 

“Wait I-” he cuts himself off and begins tugging at the zip. 

Suna watches him struggle with it, and Osamu’s face begins to grow red as he continues to tug, the zip only open part way. 

He tugs harder. 

It still doesn’t open.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, face almost glowing and Suna can imagine the heat he must be feeling in it.

“Osamu-” Suna starts. Maybe if he had some context, maybe if he knew what was going on, he could understand - maybe even help. But Osamu’s head is shaking furiously causing the hair on his head to flop back and forth over his eyes.

“I, it wont-” he’s saying, voice rising; whiny, almost panicked.

Suna walks the few steps back to him and plucks the bag from his hands while Osamu lets out a little yelp and his body jerks in surprise. 

Slowly, Suna eases the zipper back, and then gently pulls it forward again, testing it. It opens with only the barest resistance.

“You’re useless,” he hands the bag back to a stupified Osamu and his exasperated smile turns amused when Osamu tries to stutter something back. 

Osamu isn’t one to get worked up often, with the exception of on the volleyball court and in his brother's company. So Suna always gets a horribly sweet satisfaction from getting a rise out of him, forcing him onto the back foot, but in the year and a half they’ve gone to school together, and that one summer spent in each other's pockets, Suna is pretty sure he’s never seen him flustered. 

Right now seems to be the time for this particular first as he is incredibly and undeniably flustered, gaping down at his open book bag as if it contained the incriminating childhood photos Suna had serendipitously fumbled across that one day - worse even. 

Suddenly, Suna is left standing alone as Osamu has begun to scurry away. 

“‘Samu?” he calls to the boy’s back, but he’s still walking in the opposite direction of his house. 

“Nevermind, I’ll chat ta ya tomorrow,” he calls back, not turning around, holding the bag to his chest as if it did in fact hold those photographs, worse even.

“No,” Suna says jogging to catch up with him. He pulls on his arm, forcing him to face him, because Osamu is his friend and he cares for him, because he is his friend, and the way he’s been acting is really starting to affect Suna to the point he’s willing to forget about his own damn feelings. “Samu something’s clearly up with you.”

He stares at his bag, slowly raises his hand, reaches inside and pulls something out, holding it between them.

“You’re giving me your wallet?” Yeah, Suna is very confused now.

“No - I… Rin... Jus- okay,” He shakes his wallet a little and holds it a little higher and Suna cannot help the comical look he probably has on his face, his head tilted dramatically to the side, eyebrows in his hairline. 

“Am I supposed to take it?”

“Yes.”

“But you said you weren’t giving it to me.”

“No, I want ya ta open it.”

Yeah no, now Suna is definitely confused, he doesn’t know what he was before. But he takes the wallet nonetheless with stiff fingers. 

“I didn’t - I couldn’t - I’m bad with words.” Osamu says eyes fixed on the wallet in Suna’s hands.

“Yeah I can hear that.” Suna smirks and Osamu lets out a little huff.

Suna opens his wallet, the little click of the snap button sounding too loud. 

“I wanted ta, ta write a letter but…” he trails off.

He doesn’t need to finish what he’s saying because Suna understands exactly what he’s saying as he looks down at the little orange ticket sitting in the photo pocket of Osamu’s wallet. Slowly and carefully he extracts is, lays it in the palm of his hand and smiles at the scribbled kanji written when his teachers had complained about his handwriting a lot more than they do now, written using some crappy arcade prize pen against the concrete of a footpath six years ago now. He remembers the enthusiastic preteen with dark scruffy hair and shins painted black and blue and embellished with bandages.

It’s still perfectly crisp, as if it had just been spit out of the old arcade machine. He couldn’t say the same for his own. His is worn and tattered from being held too much, from being pulled out of a pocket roughly and returned again quickly in times he needed comfort. He remembers it tearing and sitting hunched over his small computer desk in his old room in Tokyo, carefully lining up and applying clear tape to it for protection and restoration purposes at the embarrassing age of thirteen. It had become a talisman of sorts, that boy that had easily adopted him as his friend in that small countryside town he hated up until that point. A time when he was too young to understand how to tell someone that they made a difference in his life and that he wasn't going to forget him. Ever. 

“Nothing has ta change,” Osamu says after a beat, “I just, after what ya said yesterday... I just thought ya know what? I should just do it, I should just tell ya. But if ya don’t like me back, nothing has ta change ‘cause I don’t wanna lose ya Rin.”

Osamu’s eyes are wide and worried and anxious and so earnest. 

“I’ve made a terrible mistake haven’t I?” he asks and sadness washes over his face and Suna wants nothing more to hold it and kiss it and make sure that never happens again.

See, Suna isn’t being overly dramatic when he reacts with his faux gag when hearing people talk about the twins almost as if they’re interchangeable, two parts of a whole made simply for other’s gratification. It genuinely leaves him with a funny feeling in his stomach, a knot in his neck, and an irritation somewhere deep inside him that cannot be quelled because Osamu was so much more than one of the twins. He is so much more than Atsumu’s brother or a pretty face or a great volleyball player. He is kind always and mean on occasion. He is selfish when he wants to be. He is considerate when he wants to be. He is funny in his own slow way and he is terrible at English. He eats too much but will never let anyone else go hungry. He is quiet to others and loud in private and so much more excitable than people would believe; he just hides it well. He snorts when he laughs too much and yawns all the time and he always messes up his sleep schedule as soon as he has the chance to. 

He is everything people think of him (a pretty face and a good volleyball player) but he is also so, _so_ much more than that.

“I hope not,” Suna replies and begins to grin, pulling his phone out of his pocket, careful not to lose the ticket in his hand. He awkwardly removes the case from his phone and reveals his own tape covered ticket bearing the inscription of Osamu’s name. “Because that would make what I have to tell you really awkward.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! 
> 
> Feel free to let me know what you think or come chat to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ohmiyamy/status/1315031386294759426?s=20)!


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